Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Published in 1793 soon after the French revolutionary execution of Louis XVI, but set during the War of American Independence (1776–83), The Old Manor House is the only historical novel by the liberal poet and novelist Charlotte Smith. Smith builds her narrative around a conventional romance plot — a love affair between Orlando Somerive, heir to the prosperous Rayland estate, and Monimia, the orphan niece of Mrs Lennard, the Rayland housekeeper. Had Smith's plot ended there, it would be indistinct from the Gothic romances of Ann Radcliffe, or from Smith's own early Emmeline (1788), Ethelinde (1789) or Celestina (1791). But The Old Manor House also examines the intersections of romance with economic and political life: Monimia's abusive charity upbringing, Orlando's disinheritance by a coalition of landed and moneyed interests, Orlando's military service against rebel colonists in New York, and Monimia's narrow escape from forced prostitution and debtor's prison in London complicate the progress of romance. The novel's American historical plot allows Smith to uphold the potential justice of revolution even during the onset of ‘the Terror’, the war between Britain and France, and the resulting anti-revolutionary fervour in Britain. At the same time, her glance at an earlier, Anglo-American revolution frees her to establish a logical connection between English political oppression ... log in or subscribe to read full text